Archive for February, 2008

I am looking for some good Halloween costume ideas for my children. I always make their costumes and I find that I am running low on ideas. I like to make costumes that are not too terribly complicated. Usually I only make costumes that take me one evening to create, so they are nothing fantastic, but the kids always look unique and they seem to love the costumes.

I think that the generic kids Halloween costumes that can be purchased are poorly made and are rather boring. I prefer my kids to be a little bit different. I do take their input to heart as to what they want to be, but I have also vetoed their choices, based on the fact that the costume would be just too hard to create.

I must admit that I am tiring of coming up with ideas on my own and am hoping to find some new, and yet simple ideas from other people. I am especially interested in ideas on making a simple robot costume. The kicker with this one is that it must fit into a booster seat. I am sure I will come up with something.

When I woke up from my nap this afternoon (yes I had a nap – I was tired), I had some pressing questions that I needed answered. You see, earlier today, I had been mapping out a list of potential names for a website I was going to launch. I thought that I had a good idea of what I wanted it to be, but I had to toss around a few names just to be sure.

That is when I fell asleep.

Needless to say, when I woke up, I had come up with a domain name and all I needed to do was find a site that I could register domain names on. I couldn’t find the name of the site that I had registered my other domain names on, so I went to do a search on the World Wide Website Directory to find a good place to register domains.

I was also sure to search for a new web hosting company as I have been having problems with one of my old ones, and I needed to make sure that the hosting was reliable. Again, I found what I was looking for on the web directory.

Now that I have everything in place, all I have to do is create a website…. or maybe I could search for a company that would do it for me.

I have been having problems with my computer’s performance for the past month now, and I thought that if I were to reformat it, that would solve all my problems.

So, I reinstalled Windows and things were going good – or so I thought. Unfortunately, there was information that I forgot to backup that I needed – in fact it was imperative that I could recover files that I didn’t backup.

Thankfully, I had some software that could recover reformatted drive to the point where I could get the information off. I was happy that there was a handy wizard that helped me to get the information back without a hitch.

Instead of hiring someone to recover data for me, I felt happy that I was able to do it for myself. Next time though, I will double check that I have everything backed up before I reformat the computer. I have learned my lesson.

We recently decided that the walls in our home needed a new coat of paint. I think it has been about five years since the last time that we painted, and you can still see the evidence of our work.

Last time we painted the walls, we did it ourselves and made a big mess. Even though we looked for tips and tricks on a painting website, we just had some issues. You can see what happened if you look at our carpet – there are paint stains everywhere.

So, this time, we decided that we would hire an Arizona house painter to do the work for us. This way, we figured we would keep the time commitment and the mess to a minimum. All we had to do is find one.

We checked out BestHousePainter.com and we found the recommended painter in our area. We booked a date with them and anxiously waited for them to arrive.

When the day came, they painted our home in about an hour! I was so surprised and shocked at the speed and quality the painter had with his work that I don’t think I will ever paint anything again – I am just way too slow.

I have been thinking for a long time now that it would be pretty cool to be a clothing designer. Sure, I would have to start small, but the point is that I would start and make the effort.

Up to this point, I have only made a couple of custom T shirts for myself and my friends. But when people see me on the street or in a club, it never fails that I get asked where I got the shirt. What really struck me was the consistency of the interest – almost everyone that asks wants to know where to get one.

With the amazing amount of interest in my designs, I went to look online to see if I could find a place that allowed you to design your own T shirt. Most of the sites that I found seemed to have a really hard interface, and I was looking for something that would be relatively easy.

After some hunting, I found a gem of a website. The site that I found let you make your own T shirt and I tried making a couple of them. Man, they were easy to make. The best part is that I could order any quantity big or small and they would me the real world product for me and deliver it to the address that I specified.

So, I have made a few of my designs and ordered them online. I am going to see how well that they sell and maybe start a business that will sell my designs. But, I am going to test the waters first.

I was disappointed the other day when I did an online search for scrapbooking supplies Canada. The reason for the disappointment was the prices that the supplies were available at. With the Canadian dollar doing so well and the American dollar doing so poorly, I was really wondering at why there was such a substantial difference in pricing.

I actually inquired about this fact at a few of the scrapbook supplies Canada websites and was not surprised that all but one did not even bother to reply to my question. The one that did reply said that it cost more to have French labels put on all the products. I didn’t buy into this for one minute.

I would love to support the Canadian scrapbook supplies industry, but until they can offer me supplies at competitive pricing with their American counterparts, I am going to have to continue purchasing my supplies from the States.

With the number of websites on the Internet, quite often as a webmaster you find yourself competing with hundreds or sometimes thousands of others to get a good search engine ranking. I don’t know about you, but if you have ever tried to do link building on your own, it is tough. Not only do you have to make a commitment to work on it every day, but it is a big time commitment as well. Even with semi-automated tools, you might find yourself spending a lot of time sitting at your computer promoting your sites instead of working on your business.

It took me awhile to realize that my time would be better spent elsewhere: building new content as opposed to doing directory submissions. It was at that point that I decided to find an SEO firm that would take care of the link building for me – and let me focus on what is important: building the business.

After checking out a number of companies, I found one that I was happy with: SubmitEdge.com. Not only did they provide outstanding service, their prices were very reasonable – and in my budget. Now, I can build more sites and be sure that they and edge over my competition – by not having to worry about promoting them anymore.

My sister and her husband are on a real health kick right now. My sister has always been a small person, who had no trouble maintaining her perfect body structure and staying at a very proper weight for her height. That is until the birth of her third child.

She had no trouble taking off the extra pounds with her first two children, and was surprised at how hard it was after her third. She decided to take it seriously and started drinking meal replacement drinks twice a day and eating a sensible dinner. This seemed to be doing just the trick.

After a long fight with the weight, she did make it back to her goal weight and is now drinking protein shakes and exercising daily. She is happy to be back where she says she belongs and has officially stated that there will not be a fourth child.

Beautiful, elegant, sexy, attractive – some examples of words that you think of when looking at a photograph of your favorite celebrity.

Looking at the posters of celebrities most people want to have such a photo session where they will be the main heroes. But the other thing is to find a really professional photographer. As a rule, we don’t have time or money for such experiments and continue to admire the impressive posters of Natalie Portman or Salma Hayek. But still you can try and take some interesting photos by yourself. First of all, it is necessary to find the best pose and perspective. Practice in front of the mirror in order to find your best impression and pose.

But one of the most important things is to take as many photos as possible. As you know among several hundreds of photos only two will be perfect and astonishing. Others are so-so. So, there is nothing strange when you don’t like most of your portraits. The thing is that you do it once a year and don’t prepare. Of course, we will not deny that there are people who are graceful by nature. But there are not a lot of them in this world. And I may reassure you that most celebrities also practise before the mirror or with a special trainer… and now it is just their second nature. So, everything depends on you.

The other vary important thing for making you look attractive on photos is the light. You also can take a mirror and compare the reflections you see when you are staying in front of the window, in a dark room or under the lamp. Just try to find the best variant and of course, read more useful tips about such things. Thus, you can create a poster of yourself or of your friend and make such a present. I am sure, it will be better than the posters of some celebrity. Just try!

Flipping the channels on the television last night, I came across one of those flipping houses television programs. I am sure that you are familiar with them – they show you the whole process, from buying the house, to renovating it, to flipping it.

What I found really interesting in this particular show is that they were talking about how to increase the value of a home without spending a lot of money. One of their suggestions was that the traditional shower baths should be replaced with whirlpool baths. According to their experience, it was one of the most effective ways to increase the value of a home significantly without spending a lot of money.

They continued throughout the show highlighting different ways bathroom suites could be renovated to increase value. It makes sense that they would focus on this aspect as most of your house guests would use your bathroom and it would be the room they would most likely remember.

I’ll just have to remember what I learned and apply it when I flip a house in the future.